About eight or ten years ago, when Luo was with the NYT, he was doing a feature piece on people who were struggling after being laid off from their jobs. At that time I was a member of a discussion board which was for unemployed people. Somebody must have known him and tipped him off about the site. Luo contacted a number of unemployed people from around the country, and I was one of them he contacted. I corresponded with him via email, and I might have even interviewed with him over the phone, but I think it was exclusively email, about my struggles, which are still ongoing. It was quite an honor to be interviewed by a well-known reporter from the Newspaper of Record. He and the editors decided on someone else to profile, IIRC a woman who was living in a motel, but it was still quite a feat to be interviewed.
Anyway, I thought I would note Luo here. I did mention him a couple of times on this blog way back nine years ago this month, December of 2010. I noted then I didn't get back to him in time for him to get my story printed.
Why did I mention him? Well, two days ago I wrote a blog post speculating as to why the religious right--misnamed by the media as "evangelicals"--continues its dogged support of Donald Trump. Michael Luo wrote a piece the other day doing the same thing. Luo does note this about the word "evangelical":
“ ‘Evangelical’ used to denote people who claimed the high moral ground; now, in popular usage, the word is nearly synonymous with ‘hypocrite,’ ” Keller writes. Last year, a group of evangelical pastors, nonprofit leaders, college presidents, and scholars convened at the Billy Graham Center, at Wheaton College, in Illinois, to discuss ways to revitalize the movement in light of its turn toward Trumpism. The meeting disbanded with little to show for it, but the organizers issued a press release that states that an “honest dialogue about the current state of American evangelicalism” had occurred.
Some, like Luo, call this either Christian populism or Christian nationalism, but these people, since around 1980, have been labeled the "religious right." "Evangelical" is a wrongheaded label because most "evangelicals" are not of the religious right, let alone dominionists, let alone followers of the New Apostolic Reformation, which is simply a rebranding of dominionism or Christian Reconstructionism to make it more palatable to the public. These people have long been fascistic in bent, but now, with an insane person in the White House who doesn't hide the fact he is crazy and corrupt, they believe their fantasy of permanent rule is at hand.
And, as I noted the other day, they are nostalgic for an era that has long passed, the 1950s, and was out of reach for many (women, people of color, and so forth) during that era. Good riddance to it.
As for Trump's followers, they are NEVER going to change. They are lost. They are steeped in xenophobia, racism, and especially sexism. They were raised with such beliefs. If they were to question those beliefs, their tenuous hold on reality would shatter.
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